


we could be heroes just for one day

by tenderjock



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Spectrum Character, F/F, F/M, au where kel wasn't allowed to stay after her first year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 16:10:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderjock/pseuds/tenderjock
Summary: After one year in service to the Crown as a page, Kel is summarily dismissed. This is not the end of the story.
Relationships: minor Domitan of Masbolle/Keladry of Mindelan, minor Keladry of Mindelan/Shinkokami of Conte
Comments: 26
Kudos: 141





	we could be heroes just for one day

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks, as per usual, to Jenny iridescentoracle for reading this over. the kel in this fc is somewhere along the ace spectrum, altho i've tried to leave it up to the reader how far along the spec she is. title from heroes by david bowie.

He said, “This is not an appropriate environment for a young lady.”

He said, “You have worked hard” – grudgingly – “but you will not be able to keep up.”

He said, “I’m sorry, Keladry,” the first time he had called her anything but ‘probationer.’

Kel stumbled out of Wyldon’s office, knees quaking. It took her a few seconds to identify the emotion she was feeling – not disappointment, not nerves, not earth-shattering grief. That would come later. Right now, the only thing she felt was  _ rage _ – deep, basic rage, making her hands shake and her stomach twist.

She waited until she was alone in her room – her room which would not be  _ hers _ for much longer – and buried her face in a pillow and just  _ screamed _ . She lay there for a moment, afterward, face-down on her bed and trembling with pent-up emotion. She gave herself two minutes; counted them out. Then she stood up, took a deep breath, and began to pack her lucky cats into their little, dented box.

: :

The meeting between the king and one of his closest advisors was going  _ splendidly _ .

“It’s  _ wrong _ ,” Raoul snapped. Jon opened his mouth to argue his point but Raoul beat him to the punch. “It’s wrong, and you know it’s wrong. You always knew. You did it anyway. I’m fixing this wrong, and I don’t care what royal command you give me. Keladry of Mindelan will have a place with the Own.”

Then, after a moment’s silence in which the two of them glared at each other, Raoul amended: “Well, once she’s grown a bit. I’m not stooping to recruiting ten-year-olds.”

“She’s eleven,” Jon said, almost absentmindedly. Raoul knew better than to assume that anything Jon ever did was absentminded.

“Well, if she’s  _ eleven _ .” The tension seemed to have broken, which was a relief. Raoul never did well with social tension.

Jon held up a hand, a conciliatory gesture. “I’ll have you know,” he said, “that I have spoken to Wyldon about this issue. I’m not pretending to be happy about his choice in the matter. Concessions to the conservatives, well, that’s just politics. Denying the realm a strong, capable warrior – ”

“It was a test,” Raoul realized. Jon twitched his mouth into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not just a test of the girl, but of Cavall as well.”

“I made my feelings clear,” the king said, almost gentle. That was another thing that Jon wasn’t: gentle. “I told him that the Crown will support female warriors, regardless of whether or not the training master does. And I told him that this was his last chance. Another misstep, and he will tender his resignation.”

When Raoul said nothing, stunned into silence, Jon nodded. Raoul dipped his own head in a small bow – whether to acknowledge Jon’s words or out of a showing of respect, he didn’t know. Raoul would never stop being thrown by Jon; he thought the last time he felt that he understood his king was when they were pages together.

Raoul had a lot to think over – including Jon’s underhandedness – but first, most importantly, he had to track down that Mindelan girl before Buri got her hands on her.

: :

Weary from a morning spent wrestling with Peachblossom, Kel headed up the hill to the palace proper to see Daine about her troublesome horse.

_ Not your horse _ , whispered the voice inside Kel’s head that kept her feet rooted firmly to the ground. She sighed; that was one of the things she needed to talk to Daine about. Her hope was that Daine would be willing to buy him for her – Kel knew her parents could not afford a warhorse, even one as ill-liked as Peachblossom.

What she did  _ not _ need was the young dog, barely more than a puppy, that wiggled and licked her face frantically as she carried him to Daine’s – and Numair’s – room in the mages’ wing of the palace. She had just saved him from an untimely end at the hands of an irate cook. He appeared to take that as a sign that she wanted to keep him.

Kel shoved down the part of herself that did want to look after the dog; he would be far happier as a pet of Daine, who could speak to him in his own language. Besides. She didn’t want some ugly mutt, anyway.

She told herself that every single day for seven days straight, carrying the dog – Daine said his name was Jump – up the hill to the palace. And every morning, she would wake at dawn to find that Jump had snuck his way back into her family’s townhouse to settle into sleep on her doorstep.

After a week, she gave up. Her parents didn’t balk at the news that she had adopted another stray; a childhood of rescued baby birds and kittens had made them lenient when it came to Kel. Her father in particular seemed to find the whole matter amusing, and took to sneaking mouthfuls of meat and cheese to Jump at the dinner table, a habit both his wife and his daughter scolded him for.

At least Daine had agreed to look after Peachblossom for the time being. Kel knew she would miss her crotchety horse, but it would be good for him to work under someone who spoke his language. That’s what she told herself, sniffling a little despite her best efforts to remain as stone.

One night after a family dinner, two days before the pages had to report for duty at the palace, Kel’s mother and father called her into their study for a conversation. Watching her father fiddle with his pen and her mother snap and unsnap her fan, Kel knew what this conversation would be about.

“I want to go back to the Islands,” she said, in Yamani. Most of their family discussions, at least when it consisted of the younger daughters and their parents, were carried out in Yamani. Sometimes Kel felt that she was more comfortable as a Yamani than a Tortallan, despite being a foreigner and a half-breed.

Her mother sighed. Ilane of Mindelan was a striking woman, even middle-aged. She said: “I know events have not … unfolded as planned. I would hate to see you make a decision in haste, or in anger.”

“No, Mama,” Kel said. She tried to think of a way to phrase her words so that they would understand. Her parents waited tolerantly for her to collect her thoughts; she thought, as she had thought so many times before, that she loved them for their patience.

“Mama, Papa,” she said. “I would not be able to train as – as a  _ warrior _ , here in Tortall, like I would in the Yamani Islands. I would have to wait until I was sixteen, or even older, to join any of the armed forces of Tortall. In the Islands, I would have the opportunity to fight – or to learn how to fight, at least.”

She ducked her head, and then spoke for the first time about her conversation with Lord Raoul: “I have been offered a place in the King’s Own, from my lord Raoul of Goldenlake.” Her mother sat up straighter; her father put down his pen. “He says, were I willing at the age of sixteen, and if I proved I was physically able, he would welcome me as a new recruit.”

Her mother hummed tunelessly. Kel’s heart flipped over in her chest as she waited for her parents to come to a decision. As she waited, she had the strangest feeling; that her entire future rested on this particular moment in time.

“She could live with Patricine,” her father murmured. Her mother nodded. The hard knot in Kel’s stomach loosened just a fraction.

In the end, her parents agreed. And so, she went off, two weeks later, on a trip to the Yamani Islands, waving goodbye to her Tortallan family, Jump sitting firmly at her side, to stay with her Yamani family for the foreseeable future.

As the ship pulled away from shore, Kel found herself crying, silently, in deep gasping breaths. She had been holding it in for so long – she couldn’t identify whether the tears were anger or grief. She blotted at her face with her handkerchief. She waved goodbye, and kept waving until the shore was just a thin dark line on the horizon.

: :

Kel met Princess Shinkokami when they are both six years old. Of course, Kel knows neither her name nor her title when she first meets her; she knows her only as the one girl who will play with her while the others are laughing behind their hands at the large, clumsy foreigner.

“What is your name?” Kel said, slowly, haltingly, in Yamani.

The girl cocked her head to the side. Her face is still blank, but her posture is playful. She said something in Yamani, all a blur –  _ name,  _ and  _ mine _ , and  _ you _ . Kel doesn’t catch her meaning.

“I am sorry,” Kel said. There’s a lump forming in her throat, but she won’t allow herself to cry. “I did not – I did not understand.”

The girl tried again, more clearly this time: “What do you think my name should be?” She makes shapes with her hands as she talks; Kel finds it easier to understand her meaning if she focuses on the gestures.

“I – ” Kel hesitated. She doesn’t want to insult the girl, but – the chirpy tone to her voice reminded Kel of nothing so much as the little insects currently occupying the garden outside. “Cricket,” she said, in Common. The girl lifted her chin, just the slightest bit.

“Crick-et,” she repeated. A warm smile lit up her eyes, although her mouth stays somber. “Cricket!”

“What is  _ your _ name?” Cricket asked, although she must know. It feels like the whole world knows who Kel and her family are; when they aren’t laughing at her, they are sucking up to her. She hates not knowing who she can trust.

“I am Keladry,” she said. Cricket nodded, encouragingly. It’s what gives Kel the courage to say, “Kel. You can call me Kel.”

: :

Kel’s return to Yaman was by turns harder and easier than she expected. She still had a decent grasp of the language, but her short time in Tortall had wrecked her Yamani social niceties. She was also, somehow, out of shape, despite –

Well. Despite everything.

And she soon came to realize that it wasn’t good enough, to train with the imperial ladies. They were fast and tireless, to be sure, but their training ended with the glaive and the shukusen, basic self-defense meant to protect them and their honor. They didn’t know the type of training she would need to keep up with the grown men of the King’s Own. And despite her apprehension about that idea –  _ a girl,  _ The  _ Girl, fighting with the Own?  _ – Kel knew she needed every advantage if she were to become a warrior.

With that thought in mind, she rose before dawn the next morning, and went searching for the imperial guards’ barracks. She had a question to ask of them.

As the leader of the imperial guard, Guardsman Akihiro was of nobility, although not of royalty, like Cricket. He was tall for a Yamani, with long hair pulled into the traditional bun, and sharp eyes. She got the sense that he missed nothing.

Kel bowed to him deeply. In Yamani, she said, “May I have the privilege of training beside you?”

Akihiro studied her. His blank face gave no trace of his feelings. After a moment, he looked away from her, scanning the group of warriors before them. They were all tough men, battle-trained and battle-tested. Whatever Akihiro was looking for, he found it, because he looked back at Kel and nodded.

“You must keep up,” Akihiro told Kel, gesturing for her to join them in line. “We will not wait for you.”

She didn’t keep up, not the first day. Halfway through the running circuit – up a flight of rocky stone stairs, around the castle base, down the village road for a mile, then up a different, even more treacherous flight of stairs – she had to tap out. Her breath was coming in frantic gasps and her legs were trembling, overcooked noodles.

Kel sat down in the middle of the road, sweat dripping down her face despite the cool mist of a Yamani morning. She had thought herself in good shape; her opinion of the Yamani guardsmen, already high, had just skyrocketed. Slowly, she picked herself up and staggered back to the guard’s barracks to join them for weapons practice.

By the time she had hobbled to the training yard, the rest of the men were already there, stretching. Silently falling in line behind the last man, Kel began to follow along. Akihiro nodded when he saw her, before turning back to lead the men in stretches.

Kel took a deep breath. I can do this, she thought to herself, then: I  _ have _ to do this.

: :

She had thought that she would be able to leave Tortall behind her for the next several years. She hadn’t counted on Neal.

Like clockwork, Neal sent a letter to her every two weeks. It was full of the usual gossip – typical of Neal – as well as a list of every book and assignment that the professors gave. He apologized, in his own way, for not sending the books to her directly, by complaining about the price of shipment. Kel thanked him, in  _ her _ own way, by including in her replies watercolor paintings of Yaman (to be shared with the prince), as well as short poems and stories written in the Yamani style, which she thought might be of interest to him.

He also wrote to inform her of their ongoing “patrols” – little jaunts she and her friends used to go on nightly, to  _ – discourage _ would-be bullies.

Apparently, in her absence, Joren of Stone Mountain and his gang had gotten bolder. She pushed that from her mind; there was nothing she could do about it here, in Yaman. Neal’s words were simply pebbles dropped into the still pool that was her mind. The ripples they left would fade. She would remain. She told herself that, and some days she even believed it.

And so her days fell into a routine. Kel became used to the schedule of training, studying, attending formal parties with her older sister Patricine, mage’s parties with Yuki, and quiet nights in with Cricket.

Then one morning, a message rider thunders into the courtyard and changes everything.

Princess Chisakami is dead. Moreover, the emperor has decided to give favor to Princess Shinkokami – Kel shot Shinko a look at this – and has arranged her marriage with the Tortallan Crown Prince Roald.

Everyone erupts into a flurry of activity at the news. Kel, stood still at the doorway, her Cricket at her side, feels like the calm eye of an incoming storm.

: :

When that storm breaks, it breaks  _ hard _ . It’s a sunny July day of 454 HE when pirates hit the Eastern coast of the Yamani isle of Taisho.

When the mage-alarm goes off, Kel scrambles to her feet and catches Shinko by the wrist; she grabs her glaive with the other hand. The guards rush, without a word to the two girls, to the front entrance.

Shinko and Kel exchange looks; they know what to do. Pirate attacks are common enough in Taisho that they have drills to prepare for it. Kel has one job and one job only: to be the last line of defense between the attacker and the princess.

“This way,” Kel says in Yamani. She tugs Shinko after her, heading towards the back of the building. Jump follows them. There’s a narrow trail that wraps around the base of their home, a perfect place to defend.

It’s also a three hundred-foot sheer drop into the ocean. Kel tries not to think about that.

The smell of burning paper and wood reaches them when they step outside. Shinko coughs, stumbling the slightest bit as she follows Kel. From here, they can see the entire village. Makkari is fire and blood. Kel’s fingers tighten involuntarily around Shinko’s wrist.

They can also see a group of pirates splitting off from the rest to ransack the castle – or what passed for a castle in Yaman. The nearest one is perhaps thirty feet away, but before he can so much as draw with weapon, Jump throws himself into a leap and catches the pirate’s throat in his teeth.

The two girls have reached the narrow trail. Kel shoved Shinko behind her and turned to face all that open empty air. The height made her vision swim, for a moment, before she got control of herself. It was easy to say that she was a still lake on a clear day; it was harder to mean it, when that drop was right there next to her left foot.

And she knew that they couldn’t stay here. They would have to climb.

“Jump,  _ come here _ ,” she snapped in Yamani. The dog came running, muzzle wet and red with blood. She reached a hand back to Shinko, who clasped it tightly. “Go,” Kel ordered. “I’ll follow.”

Shinko didn’t argue. She edged her way carefully up the cliff, away from the village which burned below them. The wind tugged at their clothes, alternately bringing them salt brine mist and the acrid scent of burning paper and wood. Kel could see straight through to the bottom of the cliff face, where the pirates stood, arguing about what to do – whether or not to follow the two of them.

She backed carefully up the narrow trail, right shoulder pressed firmly against the smooth rock that marked the lower wall of the castle. Once, her foot slipped on the wet stone and she lurched sideways, breath caught in her throat. Shinko caught her by the sleeve and held tight, until Kel was able to stand on her own again.

Kel’s stomach twisted and she fought not to throw up. Get shaky about it later, she thought firmly to herself. Despite her best efforts, her hands trembled in their grip on her glaive.

They were halfway up the narrow trail when two of the pirates decided that the danger of the drop was outweighed by the prize of a treasured foreign girl and a princess. Kel stopped climbing; her focus narrowed down to her hands, her weapon, the placement of her feet, the pirates, neither of whom seemed to have any issue with the height.

“Stay back,” she ordered Shinko. She heard the sound of Shinko’s shukusen snapping open, and consoled herself with the thought that even if the pirates managed to kill Kel, her Cricket wouldn’t go easy.

Kel had a moment to prepare for the attack. The only real advantages she had were the length of her weapon and the fact that the trail was not wide enough for more than one person. They would have to come at her one-by-one.

The first pirate carried a short, curved sword and wore a red scarf tied around his head. He rushed her but she blocked his first swing, a downward chop directed at her head. His sword bit a chunk of teak out of the wood of her glaive. His second swing came at her left side; she deflected the blow and jabbed with the sharp edge of the glaive, catching him just above the elbow of his right arm.

He shifted the sword to his left arm and made another blow, which she barely blocked in time. It figures, Kel thought to herself, that I get the one who’s ambidextrous.

The wind shifted, bringing a wet spray of seawater and whipping the end of the pirate’s scarf into his face. Kel didn’t hesitate; she used her opponent’s momentary distraction to neatly cut his throat. Blood splattered across her face, coppery and warm. The pirate’s body crumpled, then tumbled down into the ocean depths.

The second pirate was more careful. He brandished a pair of deadly foot-long knives that Kel recognized as being Cartharki-made. He was able to jab at her while keeping the other blade ready for a block. But he reckoned without her longer reach; when he stepped back to gather himself, Kel struck down at his torso, dropping her weight onto her back leg as she did so, in a movement called needle-at-sea-bottom.

The pirate reeled, a deep cut on his chest spurting blood, and fell backwards off of the cliff face. Kel knew that she would remember his scream every day of her life.

Shinko, still behind her, grasped the collar of her shirt. “Kel, look,” she pointed. Kel followed her finger to the village below the castle, where the black-and-red-armored men of the Yamani army had just begun to round up the remaining pirates and put out the fires they had lit.

Kel led Shinko down the trail, carefully. When they reached the bottom, they were struck by the chaotic scene: acrid smoke in the air; dead villagers, at least a dozen; and soldiers ruthlessly, efficiently, manacling the pirates, many of whom did not go without a fight.

When the two girls stepped into the main square in the village center, a silence fell. Villagers, pirates, and soldiers alike stared at them. Kel reached out to grip Shinko’s hand nervously, until Guardsman Akihiro pushed his way to the front of the crowd and saw them.

Akihiro slowly, deliberately, placed down his sword. He then dropped to his knees, placed his palms flat upon the ground, and bowed until his forehead touched the dusty road. Almost in one motion, the men behind him followed suit.

Kel’s hands were still shaking from the height. She turned to Shinko, and found her friend kneeling behind her. When Kel met her eyes, Shinko ducked her head down and bowed likewise. Kel swallowed a mouthful of bile, and managed to croak out: “No, Shinko – Cricket,  _ get up _ , please – ”

Without straightening, Shinko said, with only the slightest tremble in her voice, “I owe you my life, Keladry of Mindelan. I am forever in your debt.”

: :

_ I don’t know how to say this, _ Neal writes,  _ So I’ll just say it right out. _

_ A group of us pages were out scouting for game when we stumbled into a bandit camp. _

_ Three of us were injured. One is dead. Dead – it still feels wrong to say about Owen. But it’s true. And I’m glad that he was the only one. I don’t know. I wish you could have met him; I think the two of you would have gotten on well. _

: :

Two years to the day of the attack on Taisho, Kel goes home.

She made landfall in Mindelan, spent a lazy week with her nieces and nephews, and then rode south to Corus. On her first morning at her family’s townhouse, she rose at dawn and went to find a quiet place to practice her pattern dances. A lock of hair, grown out long in her years in Yaman, fell into her face. Kel blew it out of the way, thinking that she should get it cut.

Her chest twinged a little at the thought; she had grown to appreciate her now shoulder-length tresses, since even Yamani men wore their hair long in the isles. Maybe she should learn how to braid.

She was in the kitchen garden, loosening her muscles in a series of quick warm-up exercises, when she heard a gasp. Instinctively, she swung her glaive into a defensive position, only to find that the source of the noise was – a maid.

A  _ terrified _ maid. The girl, only a couple years older than Kel herself, was huddled in the corner of the courtyard, dark brown eyes wide. She was clutching a handful of mending. Kel realized that she must have been outside to catch the first rays of the dawn sun.

“I’m sorry,” Kel said, softly, like she addressed a frightened animal. The Common words felt odd on her tongue, after speaking Yamani for so long. “Are you hurt?” Kel knew that she hadn’t hurt the girl, but perhaps she had stumbled back in fright and twisted an ankle.

The maid furiously shook her head but made no move to leave. Kel took that as a good sign.

“I’m going to practice right now,” Kel told her, readjusting the grip on her glaive. “If you don’t mind,” she added. The maid shook her head again. Kel stepped back into broom-sweeps-clean position and focused on clearing her mind, putting all thoughts of skittish maids out of her head.

An hour later, the first morning bell rang. Kel finished the last of her stretches and straightened to find the maid folding up her sewing. She met Kel’s eyes timidly. Kel smiled back.

“Pleasure to meet you, mistress,” she said cheerfully, trying to imbue her words with friendliness. It was – surprisingly difficult to do, after years of training to hide her emotions. “Will you be here come tomorrow morning?”

The maid nodded. She hadn’t made a sound besides the initial cry that alerted Kel to her presence.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, mistress,” Kel said.

A week of mornings passed and the maid was brave enough to sit on the bench next to the open space that Kel had made her own. Three more days of that and she told Kel her name, Lalasa. Another week, the discovery of hand-shaped bruises on her arm, and Kel managed to coax her into learning a few grips and holds to ward off unwanted suitors who would take to violence when rejected.

She also took Lalasa’s case up with her parents, when they were briefly in Corus. Lalasa told Kel that none of the house servants were responsible, but Kel wasn’t sure the other girl was telling her the truth.

The days until her sixteenth birthday passed oddly, in jumps and starts. It wasn’t until Kel received a notarized certificate for the sale of Peachblossom, as well as receipts for his care and feeding for the next year, that she even realized she had reached her birthday.

Folded into the documents, writ with the bold strokes of a professional penman on rough canvas paper, was a simple message:  _ Keep the faith, Lady Keladry _ .

Her parents demanded, in their own understated way, an explanation. When Kel, on the verge of (happy) tears and hiding it as best she could, told them about her anonymous benefactor, her father went quiet and her mother reached out to hold her close.

“I just don’t understand  _ why _ ,” Kel said, sniffling. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Oh, Keladry,” her mother said. “You inspire others to greatness – why can’t you believe that about yourself?”

Kel closed her eyes and thought about the one thing she would never, ever share with her parents.

: :

The thing that she hadn’t told her parents was – was –

“I wanted to give you something,” Shinko had said, “Before you leave.” From the sash of her kimono, she drew out a beautiful shukusen, dove gray silk with navy, white, and gold embroidery in the pattern of a blossoming cherry tree. Shinko held the fan lengthwise in her two outstretched hands and bowed deeply.

Kel stared at her, heart in her throat. The giving of a fan was something that could be done simply, without ceremony. The fact that Shinko was giving it to her in this manner –

She knew what it meant. And she knew that Shinko was promised to Prince Roald, a marriage that neither of them could – or wanted to – disrupt. “Cricket – ” Kel began, and then realized she didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“I know,” Cricket said, head still bowed. “I just wanted you to know – I will always belong to another, but I belong to  _ you _ first.”

Kel holds that moment tight, when Tortall seems lonely and foreign, when her bad ankle aches and Peachblossom dumps her in the mud, so she will never forget the way Shinko’s hand clasped hers for just a moment, warm and gentle.

: :

She’s placed into the unit that is commanded by Domitan of Masbolle.

“This is the last favor I can do you,” Raoul tells her; kind, but not suffocating with it. “Dom is a good commander, fair, and I think he’ll do well by you.” Her very first day under his command, Dom offers her a cheese-and-sausage pastry and few words of advice and she thinks – oh.  _ This _ is what he meant.

Because Dom  _ is _ fair to her – equally lax and harsh, as though she was any one of his other men. And her stomach rolls over when he’s near, her heart pounds, and she knows he’s handsome, but this is – something else. Something she thought she would never feel for anyone other than her Cricket.

The men call her  _ Lady Kel,  _ then just  _ Lady,  _ and then  _ Ladybird _ . It starts as a joke – the punchline being that she’s like no lady they’ve ever seen. It transforms into something else, something softer. Gentler. A way of identifying her as being  _ theirs _ ; that she may be no proper lady, but they consider her one, anyway.

Kel finds that she doesn’t mind being singled out, when it comes from a place of comradery and respect.

Some of the men are still stiff and awkward with her, but her time as a page had prepared her for that. No one is outright nasty – she suspects Dom, and maybe even Lord Raoul himself, has intervened on her behalf. She still has magicked locks on her room in the palace, still holds herself Yamani-blank when one of the men makes a crude joke, still swallows her tongue when to do otherwise would set her apart.

It’s a new kind of work, one that she was expecting; a work that her years as a diplomat’s daughter has well prepared her for. In many ways, Kel thinks to herself, living in Yaman prepared her for this better than living in Tortall could have.

She thinks that, until the day Lord Raoul knocks on the wooden frame of her tent and says, “I hear you like tilting, youngster.”

: :

The Own has just returned from a week of shoveling mud in an earthquake-struck town, sore and tired but finally (finally) clean. The men are wolfing down food in the cafeteria as fast as it can be served. Kel has learned to elbow her way to the front of the line or resign herself to not eating.

Suddenly – a hush fell over the crowd. Kel craned her neck, curious to see what it was that could silence this rowdy bunch. There, at the front of the room, a Yamani lady in the traditional robes of her people. Kel squinted, and realized that under the ceremonial dress and the heavy application of face paint stood – Yuki.

Raoul got to his feet and approached her, bowing in the Eastern manner. Yuki bowed back to him, hands flat upon her thighs. She straightened, tossing a wave of black hair over her shoulder as she did so. Someone in the room sighed.

“My apologies for interrupting your meal,” she said, in accented Common. “I come at the request of my mistress, her imperial highness, Princess Shinkokami. My royal mistress was told that Keladry of Mindelan was among you.”

Raoul waved to Kel; she had already started to get up, as soon as she recognized Yuki. She had to prod Lerant’s shoulder to let her by, he was so distracted gaping at them. She would come up with a particularly sharp comment to him later, based on that.

Kel approached the two at the front of the room, acutely aware that all eyes were on her. She bowed Yamani-style, and Yuki bowed back. “Lady Yukimi noh Daiomoru, may I introduce Lord Knight Commander of the King’s Own, Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak?” Raoul made a face at the title, but quickly composed himself. The men let out a collective chuckle. “My lord, this is Yukimi noh Daiomoru, one of Princess Shinkokami’s royal ladies.”

Yuki bowed again to Raoul, then said: “Lord Knight Commander, this unworthy servant of the princess asks on behalf of my royal mistress – she requests that Keladry be released for an audience with her royal highness.”

“Of course,” Raoul said, nodding to first Yuki, then Kel. Kel ducked her head to him in thanks, then bowed again to Yuki.

“It would be my honor,” she said. No other words were necessary; Yuki’s eyes crinkled at the corners, the only sign that she was amused on Kel’s behalf. Yuki bowed once more each to Raoul, Kel, and then turned to the room at large and bowed deeply. The sound of benches scraping back and muffled curses echoed as every man tried to leap to his feet and bow back.

“Now you’ve done it,” Kel said in Yamani, “They won’t be able to talk sense for a week.”

Yuki snapped a fan across her face. “Easterners normally make sense?”

Kel glanced over at her; she knew that her amusement shone in her eyes, but that was okay. Yuki was easy-going, as Yamanis went.

Yuki closed her fan and shuffled out of the room, careful not to trip over her heavy robes. The moment the door closed behind her, the room burst into chaos: “How many Yamani girls are there, Lady?” “Do they all look like  _ that _ ?” “Do they all bow so much?” “Can you introduce me, Ladybird?”

Kel covered her mouth with a hand, feeling very un-Yamani in her laughter. Raoul clapped her on the shoulder. “You know what?” he said, “Take the day. You deserve it.”

“I already had the day off,” Kel pointed out, amused. “We all do.”

“Well,” Raoul said cheerily, “then you can  _ definitely  _ take the day. The schedule agrees with me.”

Kel’s mouth twitches, and she lets it. The men welcome her back to her seat with increasingly desperate petitions to be familiarized with the Yamani ladies. She sits back and exhaled, slowly, feeling, once more, like the eye of a swirling storm, and finally allows herself a real smile.

: :

“Are you ready?” Qasim asked. Kel felt very much  _ not _ ready, a little queasy with nerves, in fact, but she shoves that aside and nodded. He checked with Raoul and then dropped the flag, rushing out of their way to jump the fence.

Peachblossom goes thundering down the track to where Raoul and his horse, Amberfire, rise to meet them. Kel’s world narrowed to her hands, the lance, the horse beneath her, the circle of Raoul’s shield in front of her. They make contact in a clatter of metal and wood.

She struck the shield, she’s sure of it, but it doesn’t register immediately because she feels like she’s been hit with the gods’ hammer in her ribs.

Kel gasped for air, clutching her side. Peachblossom danced, managing to keep her in her saddle. Behind her, she heard a yelp from Raoul, and turned her head to see him fending off Jump and the sparrows.

“Jump,  _ no _ ,” she managed after a few seconds of frantic gulping. “Birds,  _ no _ , he’s supposed to do that!”

Jump looked at her and dropped a mouthful of Raoul’s boot, a sheepish quality to his posture. Lucky for Kel, Raoul has taken it in stride, even laughing as he shoos the birds away.

“Very good,” he said, smiling a wide easy grin in that way of his. “Most beginners don’t ever hit the shield, the first time through. Another bout?”

Kel nodded, resigned to the fact that she is a mad woman in a mad profession, and that she might as well entertain this idea of Raoul’s, that she learn to joust, properly.

“We need to get you up to scratch,” he told her last night, bent double to fit in the door-flap of her tent. “The Own needs jousters, but there’s hardly a man here who knows what to do with a lance. I hear that you’re a natural.”

“And who did you hear that from, sir?” Kel had said, finally. Raoul smiled.

“Now, cadet, I can’t give away all my secrets.”

So now they were here, at opposite ends of the tilting field. Kel pumped her lance in signal, and began her second bout with a slightly lighter heart. She had forgotten – forgotten that she missed this. It was good to be back, she thought, as she kneed Peachblossom into a hard canter and brought her lance down to meet Raoul.

: :

After a late night with the men spent touring taverns of the Lower City, on top of the daily training all the Own did on their days off, Kel wanted nothing more than to  _ sleep _ . She dragged herself to her room, undid the magicked locks, and collapsed face-first on her bed without even taking her boots off.

Wailing awoke her, shortly followed by the sound of thunder. She jolted awake, befuddled. The thunder resolved itself into the sound of someone – or multiple someones – pounding on her door. She scrambled to her feet, brushed a hand over tangled hair and wrinkled clothes, and yanked the door open.

Standing outside were two men and a woman. The man with long white hair had his hand raised to continue his attempts to bash her door down, but he stopped and stared when he saw her. He might be handsome, if his face weren’t contorted with fury.

“Bitch!” he cried. The woman clutched his arm, tear tracks running down her face; he shook her off. “You killed my boy, trollop!” He made a movement to strike at her face, but Jump threw himself between Kel and the man, growling a deep, vicious growl that practically dared him to continue. All three flinched back from the dog.

Kel didn’t know this well-dressed stranger, nor his companions. Doors were opening along the hallway – their noise had been enough to wake the other men of the Own. “You bitch!” he screamed again, and moved to grab Kel’s throat. She blocked the motion and Jump leapt to catch the man’s wrist between sharp teeth.

“What’s this?” came Raoul’s voice, clear and firm over the sound of grumbling awakened soldiers. He strode forward to grab the white-haired man by the arm that Jump didn’t grip. “Jump, off,” he ordered. The dog did as he was bade, although he remained crouched between Kel and the man.

The man was letting out a string of curses, eye bulging with rage. Raoul shifted from holding his arm to holding his neck, giving him a firm shake as he did so.

“I don’t even know you,” Kel said. The man took a deep breath and resumed his – rather uninspired, in the opinion of a girl who has trained for the past several years with both Yamani and Tortallan soldiers – cursing.

“My lord of Stone Mountain, you forget yourself,” Raoul said icily. “Do not try to carry out your threats; I will break your jaw.”

“He is distraught,” the woman said. “It is the grief. My lord, please – ”

“ _ My son is dead! _ ” Buchard of Stone Mountain cried, teeth baring as he spoke. “The Chamber released only his corpse!”

“Joren?” Kel whispered, horrified. “Dead?”

Dom has placed himself between Buchard and Kel and seems to be just barely restraining himself from snarling at the other man like a rabid dog. She has Jump for that, Kel thinks, as she casts a look around Dom’s broad shoulders.

“How did you do it?” Stone Mountain whispered, voice rough from shouting. “How did you – ”

“I didn’t do anything!” Kel said, shocked. Raoul shook him again.

“My lord,” he said. She half-expected his words to leave physical cuts, they are so sharp. “I make allowance for your grief. You will take your leave now. Do you hear me?”

“We hear you,” the woman – Joren’s mother – said. “We will leave.”

“We hear the cry throughout the realm,” the other man said. “When even the Chamber of Ordeal is corrupted – ”

“ _ I make allowance for your grief _ ,” Raoul said. The woman grabbed both of the men and tugged them away, throwing wild looks back behind her as she went.

“Kel,” Dom said, “Don’t listen to that bullshit. None of that was your fault.”

Kel thought about it for a moment, then nodded. The men have gathered around them, dark eyed and serious. Until –

“You sleep with your shoes on, Ladybird?” Symeric asked her, corner of his mouth turning up in a smile. The tension in the air broke and she exhaled, touching a hand to her hair before catching herself. She knows from experience that any sign of a “feminine” thought such as the urge to fix her hair would be met with good-natured mocking.

“What, and you don’t?” she joked back, letting herself be soothed by the – aggressively non-sexual – shoulder pats as the men file back into their rooms. Dom is the last to go; he looks back at her from his doorway and files off a sharp salute. Kel smiled.

: :

“My lord will be angry,” Lerant said, following her back to her tent.

Kel stopped short at that. “Why?” she asked. “He’s been trying to get me to enter tournament jousting all Progress. And that asshole wasn’t going to let you challenge him, so go away, or at least be quiet. I need to get ready for tomorrow.”

Lerant opened his mouth, then closed it again. Eventually, he said, in a funny tone of voice, “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”

Kel had gotten to know Lerant pretty well over the course of the last year. She knew what he meant. “It wasn’t for you,” she said – a little white lie. “Shoo, now. I’m going to change.” He jerked like he stepped on a hot coal, and left at a run.

By the time she had identified all the gear she needed for tomorrow and was changing into her nightgown, Raoul had arrived. He knocked on the frame of her tent.

“Hello,” he said, cheerily. “Lerant tells me you’ve gone and gotten yourself challenged to a joust.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, carefully unpinning her hair from its elaborate braids. “Tomorrow morn.”

“Well,” Raoul said, starting to chuckle. “Against a full knight, too. You don’t fuck around, I’ll give you that.”

She smiled at him. “I like to think so, my lord.”

That was the first of many jousts she participated in during the course of the Grand Progress. It seemed that once conservative knights – and squires – knew that she was ready, willing, and able to hold a lance, they were clambering over each other to challenge her. All of them claimed the mandate of the gods. Kel would have found it funny, if it weren’t so exhausting.

“Oh, look,” she said wearily, to a group of the Own that included Lerant and Symeric. “I’m up again for tomorrow.”

She squinted at the chalkboard; it was hard to read at night, with only light from torches. Stepping closer, she read, in plain lettering,  _ Wyldon of Cavall. _

“Oh, you’re dead,” Lerant commented. “You just haven’t bothered to lie down yet.”

“So helpful,” she said. And then: “I need to talk to my lord.”

Raoul could only help her so much; when Kel heard that Wyldon had been the last man to separate Raoul from his saddle in a joust, she quietly resigned herself to the fact that she was going to go flying tomorrow, straight into the nice, fresh mud created by the night’s rain.

The first pass, both of their lances broke; the second, she was struck hard, rattling her very bones. The third, and, as she had suspected, she went careening to the ground, shedding her shield and lance along the way. She was only glad that, in friendly competition, participants wore padded clothing and leathers. She didn’t think she would be able to stand again if she wore armor.

Kel leaned against Peachblossom, snagging her shield on the way over. Behind her, she heard movement, and turned to see Wyldon on his horse, holding out a hand. For a moment, she simply stared at him, sure that she had gone mad.

“I wouldn’t let you joust for another year,” he said, “But I suppose Goldenlake has his reasons. Your passes were good, Lady Keladry. Watch your weight in the saddle. And raise your shield two or so inches upon impact.”

Kel hesitated, then reached out to clasp his hand. “Thank you, sir,” she said, face Yamani-blank.

He nodded, then turned his horse to ride away. Peachblossom whuffed.

“No,” she said to him, “I don’t know what that was, either.”

: :

Morning glaive practice was Kel’s favorite time of day, for all the bruises it gave her.

Shinko caught Kel behind the knees with the butt of her glaive. Kel went sprawling on the floor, thankful – not for the first time – that the ground that they practiced on was padded. She swept at her still-long hair; every time she had made the decision to cut it short again, something happened to delay her. Now, she held it mostly-firm in a series of braids that she then pinned down.

Shinko, her own hair swept up in a traditional noblewoman’s bun, plunked the end of her glaive down and cocked a hip, looking quietly pleased with herself.

“Are you alright?” she asked, a hint of smugness in her eyes, although her face remained Yamani-blank.

Kel reached out a hand and Shinko clasped it to tug her to her feet. Before the princess could help her up, Kel snapped a foot out to catch her in the crook of her pelvis, yanked hard, and rolled, sending Shinko flying over her head and Kel neatly to her feet.

Kel squared up as the princess climbed to standing again. Shinko didn’t say anything; the look in her eyes made words unnecessary. On she came in a flurry of blows, fast enough that Kel was having trouble blocking them. She caught the blade of Shinko’s glaive beneath the staff of her own and bore down with all her strength until the other, smaller girl’s arms were shaking with the effort.

Someone clapped. The noise spooked both of them; they flinched away from each other and back into the broom-sweeps-clean position. Looking around, Kel and Shinko realized they had become a spectacle for various nobles, commoners, and the men of the King’s Own. They exchanged mortified glances, which they both immediately hid behind Yamani-polite masks.

Kel bowed to Shinko, who neatly bowed back, and joined Dom and Lerant at the fence of the practice yard. “Hello,” she said. “I thought you were all at breakfast.”

“Heard that there was going to be some entertainment in the form of our favorite Ladybird,” Dom said, shoving his hands into his pockets. Lerant scowled; that seemed to be his permanent expression, so Kel didn’t take it personally.

A warm hand landed on her shoulder. Kel looked up – still  _ up _ , even after several years of growth spurts – and into Raoul’s eyes. “Mindelan,” he said, uncharacteristically somber. “A word?”

Kel exchanged a look with Dom – hers questioning, his unhelpfully bewildered – before nodding and following Raoul back to his tent.

“Water, juice?” Raoul said, putting up a small table and two rickety chairs. Kel takes a cup of water but remains standing until Raoul gestures to the opposite chair.

“Is there a problem, sir?” she asked, perched uncomfortably on the edge of her chair. She sips her water, despite feeling like her stomach is in knots.

“I’ve only had to give this talk a handful of times,” he said. “But if I’m not wrong – and I haven’t been wrong so far – you need to hear it.”

“Sir?” Kel asked, confused beyond belief.

“You know that men who love men and women who love women are – frowned upon, would be a polite way of saying it, in Tortall.” Kel feels the blood drain from her face. Raoul nods.

“As someone who has a – vested interest in the matter, I personally believe this attitude to be offensive and – and  _ wrong _ . But people talk. I try not to put pressure on you to perform, but you must know that as the first female member of the Own, there are a lot of people waiting for you to fail. And even more waiting for you to succeed.”

“I know, sir,” Kel said. She grips the wooden cup hard in her hands to stop their trembling. “I have – we have an agreement. Neither of us will do anything to risk the royal engagement, or either of our careers.”

“Good,” Raoul said, then awkwardly cleared his throat. Kel takes that as her cue to leave, but stops just short of exiting the tent flap.

“Sir?” she said. Raoul looked up. “When you said – your interest in the matter – ”

“Ah,” Raoul said, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck. “ _ Yes _ , is the answer to the question you’re asking.”

Kel digested that for a moment, before stepping out of the cramped tent to go find Dom and Lerant. She probably needed to talk to Cricket, but that could wait. Right now, those sausage rolls that the chef in block three of the Progress camping grounds made were calling to her.

: :

Finally, the bloated processional that was the Progress is over and the Own were back, however briefly, at the palace. Instead of spending Midwinter serving at fancy dinner parties, Kel went with the men down to the Lower City and patronized series of increasingly disreputable bars and taverns, learning bawdy drinking songs and betting on everything from dog races to who of the men could chug a beer the fastest.

Still –

Still, she would have liked to be at those parties. It wasn’t the parties themselves – although she had certainly attended a few, as Shinko’s guest, and enjoyed the spectacle of it all – but the recognition.  _ Squires _ served at parties, and as Kel cheered Dom on in his attempts to arm-wrestle Hakim, she couldn’t help but think that while this was good, squiredom would be  _ better _ .

: :

_ She’s in a blank room. The walls dissolved into blackness; the ceiling is a starless sky. In front of her is a man, a nothing man, brown hair and blinking eyes. He squirmed, picking at his nails, his face, his clothing. She watched him because there was nothing else to watch. _

_ Then: something she had never seen before. A nightmare device, steel-coated giant bones and metal pulleys as muscles, ligaments, swinging its metal head around to display a doll in its mouth. She shifted forward without thinking, to see the device better. Why would someone make a doll like that, she thought, bruised and battered, bleeding from the nose, and then the device dropped its burden and she  _ realized _ . _

The shock woke her, and she sat up in her blanket roll, gasping for breath. Only the long months of working with the Own kept her from crying out in the middle of the night. After a moment of shivering, chilled to the bone with horror, she climbed out of her bed and found a quiet place to practice her glaive pattern dances, and forget.

Oh, gods, if only she could forget.

: :

It’s mid-August on the Scanran border and Kel thought she might melt in her armor. She had used a handkerchief to tie a few griffon feathers to her forehead, a present from Lerant for her eighteenth birthday. She thought to herself, as the band slipped down, that perhaps she’d have better luck braiding a few feathers into the locks of hair near her face. That’s assuming she gets out of this battle alive, of course.

They’re faring somewhat well against the Scanran invaders; only one dead, two injured, while they have caused multiple casualties for the enemy.

Of course, one of their injured is their sergeant, Dom. Kel, in the midst of the battle, takes a moment to send up a prayer to Mithros for his life. Raoul comes around to their flank, bent double to avoid presenting a target for enemy archers.

“Kel,” Raoul said, gripping her shoulder. “You’re being promoted to corporal. Take command.”

She forgot herself for a moment and gaped at him. “ _ Command? _ What about – ”

“Symeric is a good man, but no commander. Dom knows it was a mistake to promote him. Worse, Symeric knows. You’ve got the squad, Kel.”

She hesitated, but if her two years with the Own had taught her anything, it was not to crumble under life-threatening pressure. She nodded, then handed over the griffon-feather band for Raoul to use. He squeezes her shoulder and creeps back out to face the giant that the Scanrans are fighting with.

She sends a quick prayer up for his life, as well. She figured it couldn’t hurt.

“Lord Raoul has put me in command,” Kel said firmly to the men. Symeric looked visibly relieved; some of the other men looked visibly upset. She ignored both reactions, and sent the men back to their posts to hold the right flank.

Afterwards, she would recall the way Wolset attempted mutiny against her in a sort of dreamlike haze. The thing she remembered – the thing they all remembered – was the killing device.

It was just like her nightmares; a mountain of bone and metal, quick as a flash and strong as an ogre. Its steel claws neatly beheaded Symeric. When the men managed to trap it, trussing it up like a spidren’s dinner, Kel took her warhammer, rappelled up the side of it, and knocked a hole through its skull.

Before it died, the thing looked at Kel and – and spoke in a  _ child’s _ voice, calling out for its mama. Limbs trembling, Kel fell the fifteen feet to the ground, adding another ache to her already-sore back, and ordered two men who hadn’t fought the device to wrap it up in ropes.

Wolset, now newly promoted to corporal along with Kel, asked: “Is that enough kraken for you, Lady?”

It was, she thought. And she survived it. They said she wouldn’t.

Thinking of the killing device’s unreal horror, she knew it wouldn’t be the last kraken she fought. This was just the beginning.

: :

Word of orders spreads fast throughout army camps, and gossip spreads faster. Numair flew up – literally flew, in the form of an enormous black hawk – to see the killing device, and presumably probe it with his magic. Kel didn’t really know the details; it was mage business, not anything that a sensible human being would be interested in. She was more interested in another piece of gossip passing around.

“All the men are calling me Shadeslayer,” she grumbled – well, it wasn’t really a grumble. She was mostly just confused.

“Ah,” Dom said through a mouthful of toast. He swallowed and clarified: “I, uh. May have started that.”

She shot him a look. He smiled; it was a very pretty smile, one that made Kel’s stomach turn over, but she staunchly refused to allow it to color her reaction to him.

“Really,” she said, in her flattest voice. His smile took on an apologetic note.

“Well,” he said, “’Shade’ is the closest we’ve come to identifying what that fucking thing was. And you did make the final blow – ”

“And I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the rest of the men – ” she interrupted. Dom waved in acknowledgement, then shook his head.

“But you were in command, Kel, and that  _ means _ something,” he shot back. She frowned, momentarily stymied. Dom nodded.

Wolset, beside her, offered his copper noble: “We all woulda been toast if that motherfucker had gotten free again. You were the only one that would go near it, Lady.” She turns her frown to him. He just shrugs.

“Have you heard the order?” Lerant said, sliding into the bench next to Kel. He elbows her. She elbows back.

“What order?”

“We’re to return to Corus,” he said, tearing into a dinner roll. He chews for a moment, then swallows. “Second Company’s being rotated back out to the border.”

“After just six months?” Kel said, surprised. She exchanged a look with Dom.

“They managed to get numbers up faster than expected,” Lerant said. “Seems like everyone wants to take a piece out of a Scanran, now.”

“When are we leaving?” Wolset asked.

“Soon as we can get our shit together,” Lerant said. “Second Company’s expected to reach us in a week, and we’re to hand over the keys immediately.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Dom said suddenly. Kel gave him a long look.

“Welcome party?” she suggested. Dom laughed, clapping her on the shoulder.

“Welcome party!” he agrees. “See, this is why Ladybird’s my favorite.”

“What are we welcoming them for, though,” Wolset asked. “The opportunity to be butchered up by a Northern bastard?”

“Hey,” Kel said mildly, “I’m northern, you know.”

Lerant takes up Wolset’s point: “It’s a bit – morbid, don’t you think?”

“Maybe I’m just a horrible person,” Dom said.

Kel nods slowly. “You know,” she said contemplatively, “That might be it.”

“Alright, alright,” Dom said as all the men within listening distance roared with laughter. “Forget what I said. Nobody listen to Mindelan; everything she says is a lie.”

“I think it’s a good idea, though,” she said. “I think the men could use the distraction.” In the absence of wine and women, the Own had turned to other, less damaging vices: knitting (in the case of Qasim), chess tournaments, watching Kel joust with Raoul. She thought to herself that all war is, is men growing progressively madder.

You’d have to be mad, to think of war in the first place, she thought.

You’d have to be mad, she thought again, remembering the pile of dead children at the killing devices feet. Kel shivered, and tugged her burnoose tighter around her shoulders. You’d have to be fucking insane.

: :

Welcoming Neal and the others to the miserable mudpit that was this refugee camp was an exercise in bitterness.

On one hand, she was proud of her former classmates for successfully passing their Ordeals – of course she was proud. And she missed Neal; her interactions with him in person had been fairly limited, the past several years, but they wrote to each other nearly once a week. She looked forward to seeing him again.

On the other hand –

On the other hand, the fact that they were knights and Kel  _ wasn’t _ was a bitter pill to swallow. Even more so was the knowledge that Lord Wyldon would arrive with them. She wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing her old training master again, off of the jousting court. Kel knew, from court gossip, that Wyldon had resigned from his post after the death of Joren and the disgrace of Vinson, but she hadn’t seen him since then.

Still, when the lookout blew the horn call for friendly faces on the horizon, she urged Hoshi to pick up the pace so that their scouting party would be back at camp when the newcomers arrived.

Gil took her horse’s bridle while she dismounted. “Lady,” he said, awkwardly gallant, sketching her a hint of a bow. She smiled at him, just with the corner of her mouth. She liked Gil, for all that he was a former bandit, and she on the other side of that particular fight.

“Meathead!” Dom yelled, waving. Neal laughed, and Kel took a deep breath, fixing a small smile to her face. The movement that seemed so natural with Gil felt – fake, when it was for the knights.

She stepped around Hoshi, patting her on the nose one last time, before turning to face the music.

“That’s  _ Sir _ Meathead to you,” Neal said, giving Dom a light shove. The rest of the men held back, watching. Kel knew that Wolset, at the very least, had met Neal and the others, but they weren’t particularly close. She tried smiling again, this time with slightly better results, and reached out to clasp Neal’s hand.

“Kel!” he said. “What are you all doing here? No one mentioned the Own’s presence in the camp.”

“We’re here under the instruction of Lord Raoul,” she explained, “Just the one squad, until things are – more settled, I suppose. Did you like your flag?”

“I loved it,” Neal said, looking up at the Queenscove flag snapping sharply in the stiff breeze.

“She don’t get all the credit for it,” Wolset said. “I thought of it.”

“And you what nearly ruined the embroidery!”

Kel catches Neal’s eye and rolls her eyes. He smiles, weakly. She gets the impression that it’s just now sinking in, the level of responsibility that he’s been given.

“C’mon,” she said, waving him forward. “You’ll need a tour, and I need to be not covered in mud anymore. We’ll talk at dinner. The cook makes a fantastic lamb stew.”

As she went, she very carefully did not look at Wyldon. She couldn’t face him right now. Someday, maybe; but not right now.

: :

Kel was loathe to tear Neal away from his duties as commander of the refugee camp, but he looked exhausted and on the verge of an angry outburst, in that way of his. He needed the distraction, and she could use the company. She caught him by the arm once he had gotten his lunch tray and tilted her head towards the back of the building, where the officers – and mages – ate.

“Neal,” she said. “Can you come talk to Master Numair with me?”

Neal gave her a sharp look, tempered by the fact that he was started to droop from fatigue. “Well, sure,” he drawled, throwing an arm around her shoulders, “Since I’ve got nothing better to do – ”

She elbows him none-too-gently in the gut. “Stop being ridiculous,” she said. Neal must have picked up something from her tone, because he didn’t groan or complain, but straightened up and followed her to the table which was empty save for Numair. He smiled up at her when she sat across from him, Neal at her side.

“Lady Keladry, it’s good to see you,” Numair said, voice deceptively quiet for such a large man. “And Neal – how are your studies going?”

“Well,” Neal said, wry. “I’ve graduated from the school of sharp tongues and sharper swords. Although,” he added, “Not without a few battle wounds.”

Numair’s attention shifted over to her. “Lady Keladry, you wanted to speak with me?”

“Yes,” she said, then immediately ran out of words. She hesitated, looking over the crowd at the refugee camp as a way to measure out her thoughts.

“I’ve been having – visions, I suppose they are,” she managed to get out, before being interrupted by Dom, holding a tray of food.

“You alright, Ladybird?” He asked, placing his tray on the table. “Is this seat taken?” Dom addressed the question to the table at large, but his very blue eyes were fixed on Kel, a worried expression on his face.

“I’m fine,” she said. Even as she said it, she winced; she knew it sounded unconvincing. Dom raised an eyebrow and stole a roll from Neal’s plate. All three men waited patiently while she collected her thoughts. In a way, she was glad Dom had crashed their little talk. He had a way of relaxing anyone, and she surely needed it right now.

“It’s not – it’s kind of a secret, I guess,” Kel finally said.

“Oh, secrets,” Dom said, shifting his chair over so he can huddle across the table at her. “I love secrets.”

“I swear,” Kel said thoughtfully, considering him. “Men are worse than teenage girls, with the gossiping.” Dom made a face at her. Neal snorted. Numair’s lips quirked into the hint of a smile.

“C’mon, Ladybird, indulge us,” Dom said with an easy grin. The grin began to slip off his face as he watched her struggle to put the experience of the dreams – the skin-crawling, creeping horror of it all – into words, and it had disappeared altogether by the time she had worked up the guts to look him in the face.

“Kel?” he asked. She nodded, swallowing hard.  _ She could do this _ . She’s done harder things.

“I’ve been having dreams – visions, maybe,” she told him. “Of the killing devices, but  _ before _ we saw any of them. I just thought they were – I don’t know, nightmares.”

The three men are silent for a moment. “But they’re not,” Neal said finally, somber. She shakes her head.

“There’s a man,” she said. “Blayce, his name is. The Nothing Man. He’s the one that does this. I see him sometimes, with – with piles of dead bodies,  _ children, _ and he – ” She cuts herself off, blinking hard. A large hand holding a handkerchief appears in her line of vision. Kel murmurs her thanks to Numair and blots under her eyes. When she has herself under control, she looks up.

“I don’t know why I’m seeing this,” she told them, miserably. She felt very small and fragile, suddenly. And in the grand scheme of things, Kel supposed she  _ was _ small, fragile, temporary. She sucks in a slow, grounding breath.  _ I am a still lake; this is a cloud, merely passing over my surface. _

“I have to do something about it,” she said, sniffling a little. “I don’t know what, and I don’t know where, or how, but – if I’m seeing this, it must be for a  _ reason _ .” Dom reaches across the table to squeeze her shoulder. Kel leans into the touch, just the barest bit.

Numair taps the nails of his fingers on the table, rhythmically. “This may be useful,” he said. “We have heard reports of this man, Blayce the Gallan. So far we haven’t had anything solid on him, other than snippets of his past; he studied in the City of the Gods but was exiled for the use of necromancy. But with these visions, as you said, we might be able to find him.”

“I don’t know,” Kel said, feeling simultaneously dubious and tired and wanting nothing more than to hand this problem over to someone else. “I don’t get – details, or anything. Just the killing devices, and the bodies, and the Nothing Man.”

“We can work with that,” Numair assures her. He’s already got that faraway look that all the mages in her experience sometimes get, where they’re here physically but their mind is a thousand miles away, already working on their next project.

She hoped he was right. She was getting tired of nightmares.

: :

Between her usual duties with the Own, jousting practice with Raoul whenever they had a free minute, and the magic tests she had to endure with Numair, Kel lived in a state of complete exhaustion. She barely registered the passage of time, but it had been four months.

She had faced three killing devices in that time. No one said it to her face, but the men still called her Shadeslayer, and she knew her squad trusted her – not Dom, not Raoul, not Lord Wyldon – to kill the things.

It was June of 460 HE when the news came from Haven; they had been razed to the ground, people stolen for slavery or worse. Neal, face white and knuckles in tight fists, had promptly gone missing in action, presumably to follow his people.

“He learned that from you,” Dom said, hands in pockets. When she bristled, he shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.” He wandered away, like he had all the time in the world, but Kel saw the stiffness of his broad shoulders, the hard glint in his eye, and knew he was thinking the same thing that she was.

Neal would need backup. That, she could provide.

Kel was halfway through packing her saddlebags when the stable door swung open to reveal Raoul and Dom. She froze.

“Going somewhere?” Raoul asked, with a sort of cheerful indifference.

“I, ah,” Kel said, trying and miserably failing to come up with a good excuse as to why she was packing for a long trip behind enemy lines at two o’clock in the morning.

Dom clapped her on the shoulder, then tugged her into a one-armed hug. “My lord has approved the boys for a jaunt on the Scanran side of the border. Looks like you got the jump on us.” Jump wagged his tail at the word ‘jump’; Dom bent to give him a scratch behind the ears.

Kel released a slow breath, tension that she hadn’t realized she had unwinding from her shoulders. “Thank you – thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it,” Raoul said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is a chance for you to stop those killing devices for good. Anyone in my position would jump at this opportunity.” Jump’s tail thumped again. Raoul used the heel of his boot to gently rub the dog’s stomach.

Kel gave him a short bow anyway, elbowed Dom off of her, and went back to tightening the straps that secured her glaive to her saddle. Big hands helped her hold the glaive in place; Raoul stepped back once she was done. Before she could move away, he places his hands on her shoulders and looked at her –  _ really _ looked at her, as he had done once before when she was no longer a page and had no place – no one – backing her up.

“Come back in one piece,” he said. “All of you. We need you – the realm needs you.” When she nodded, he dipped down to kiss her on the forehead. She let out a long breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Now, finally, I’m on your trail, she thought fiercely at the Nothing Man. I’m coming to end this.

: :

“Absolutely not,” Neal snapped, glaring at her. “Go back!”

Kel exchanged a look with Dom, and lost the mental coin toss. “Wolset,” she said wearily, “Take the men and get breakfast ready.”

“Yes, Corporal,” he said; the other men followed, including Dom. Merric, Seaver, and Esmond were already crouched by the measly fire that they had managed to start using damp wood and leaves.

“Look,” Kel told Neal quietly. “My lord Raoul has given us license to be here, which you do not have. You  _ need _ us, Neal.” After a moment scrutinizing his face, she added: “And I’m a little insulted that you didn’t think I’d follow you, anyway.”

An unconscious smile broke across Neal’s face. “I did – think that, actually,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Well,” Kel said briskly. “We’re beyond that now. Come have breakfast.”

His fingers danced across the red silk fan in his belt. The movement made Kel reach for her own fan, tucked in the top of her boot like a knife.

“If this succeeds,” Neal said, quietly, “I’ll never see her again. I’ll be killed, for treason.”

Kel clasped him on the shoulder. She thought about reassuring him with sweet platitudes, but in the end there was nothing left to say. He was right.

“Come to breakfast, Neal,” she said again. “You’ll feel better.”

: :

In the end, it was Kel who bowed her head and said the prayer for the dead that they found along the roadside. Neal was at her shoulder, furiously rubbing at his eyes and – she’s glad, that these aren’t her people to cry over, that she didn’t know this kind of loss. She’s glad that she doesn’t know how it feels, and she’s ashamed of her gladness.

: :

Night falls on their second day across enemy lines. Kel exhaled slowly, watching the darkness before her for any moment. At her shoulder, a crackle of leaves – she turned, sword at the ready, but it was only Dom, come to relieve her.

“Hey, Ladybird,” he said, before falling silent. The two of them stood there, in the dark, contemplating this mad journey they were on – at least, that’s what she was contemplating. She couldn’t speak for Dom’s thoughts.

“Go to sleep,” he said, gentle. She hummed.

“I keep dreaming of them,” she said, suddenly, a desperate need to confess. “The killing devices, and the – the children.”

Dom is quiet for a long second. “Kel,” he said, then reached out to tilt her chin up into a kiss.

Kel doesn’t move. After a moment, Dom pulled back. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Dom,” she said, helpless: “I can’t – ”

“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to do that, once.” He smiled, wry. She stared at him for a long moment, then nodded, heart pounding.

“Go to sleep, Kel,” Dom said again. “You can rest, now. We’re almost there.”

: :

Fighting Stunmun Fodeben took the last bit of energy in Kel’s limbs. After that, she stumbled into Blayce’s workroom, neatly beheaded him, and gathered the stunned form of the orange cat that Dom had taken a liking to. She didn’t belong here, with child murderers.

Halfway down the last flight of stairs to the castle’s courtyard, Kel stopped. She was dizzy, and her injured shoulder throbbed. Prodding it with a finger, the pain nearly made her faint. She sat down.

Just for a minute, she thought to herself. Just a minute, to catch my breath.

The throbbing worsened. Her arms and legs grew heavy. Everything faded, except the pain in her shoulder. Her vision went gray, and she closed her eyes.

Some time later – it felt seconds, but it could have been more – Kel was shocked to consciousness. Literally  _ shocked _ , a green-fire thunderbolt pulsing through her chest. She came to in a spluttering burst, choking on bile. Steady hands rolled her onto her side.

“You call that a bandage?” Neal said from her right, voice tight. “I spent a gods-curst hour picking threads out of that shoulder wound. What possessed you to – to –”

Kel rolled back onto her back. She didn’t quite feel up to sitting up, yet. “You –” she croaked, then coughed. Her throat, dry from dehydration and sandpapered from vomiting, gave out.

“Here,” Dom said, on her other side. He handed her a flask of water.

She drank greedily. When she felt capable of speaking again, she looked at Neal. “You should see the other fellow,” she said. Gingerly, she sat up.

Neal made a frustrated noise and sat back on his heels. He looked exhausted. Dom, too, looked exhausted. Chewed up by the kraken and spat back out, Kel thought.

The exhaustion’s sharp edge faded somewhat on their short journey back south to the Tortallan side of the border. No one escaped without some injury; Neal, the only trained mage among them, was spread thin amongst so many patients. Kel made sure to make him eat and drink water regularly. Master Numair had drummed it into their heads that an overworked mage was a useless mage. That much she remembered from her lessons as a first-year page.

When they arrived at the border, Lord Raoul and Wyldon were waiting for them. 

Neal slowly dismounted, then dropped into a kneel, Merric just a hair behind him. Seaver and Esmond followed. The Own’s men followed Raoul and Duke Baird; so did the commoners, both Tortallan and Scanran. Kel hesitated for a moment, then swung herself out of Peachblossom’s saddle to join her friends on their knees before Lord Wyldon.

“My lord,” she said, head bowed so she didn’t have to look at him. “If you’re punishing them, you might as well give me the same treatment.”

Lord Wyldon surveyed the group of them for a long moment. “Quite frankly,” he said, voice low but clear, “I believe that I owe the lot of you an apology.” Kel looked up, surprised. Neal’s shoulders, in front of her, tightened. No one moved, or even breathed. The only sounds were from the small animals in the woods around them.

“One of the hardest lessons for any commander is this: it is a very bad idea to issue an order one knows will not be obeyed,” Wyldon said. “I should not have issued the order to abandon your people. Moreover, you – along with those very same people and a squad of the Own – have ended our largest problem of the war. We are in your debt.

“On your feet, now,” he said. “And Queenscove, get some rest. You look about to keel over. I would like a moment with Lady Keladry.”

Kel watched her friends leave, casting looks over their shoulders as they went. Just beyond them, Dom stood, ostensibly checking his horse’s feet. When he glanced at her, eyebrow raised, she shook her head, although whether it was to answer his unasked question – why Wyldon wanted to talk to her – or to tell him she didn’t need help, she wasn’t sure.

“Lady,” he said, then shook his head. “Corporal Keladry. If I owe anyone an apology, it is you.”

When Kel just blinked at him, surprised, he elaborated: “I have treated you unjustly. Unfairly. I knew it was unfair, but I did not listen to the voice of honor. I was blinded by my prejudices, and this realm very nearly took the consequences for it.” The words came out like they were being dredged out of his throat.

“Oh,” she said, stunned. Her shoulder throbbed, making it difficult to think. “Sir –” she broke off when she realized she didn’t know what to say.

Wyldon’s tone changed. “Apparently the killing devices at Frasrlund and the City of the Gods collapsed in the field and move no longer. The spymaster is spreading rumors that a powerful new mage has joined the war effort on our behalf.” Kel smiled, despite herself. The two of them lapsed into silence. Kel was still kneeling.

“Well, Mindelan,” Wyldon said finally, offering her a hand up. She took it. “What shall you do now?”

She stared at him. That was the third time in this conversation that he had surprised her. She didn’t like it. “Sir, I go with the Own.”

What she didn’t say was that the Own was her family now, as much as Mama and Papa were. Lord Raoul had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go; when Wyldon himself had given her no other options.

When Wyldon mounted his horse and moved to rejoin the others, she climbed onto Peachblossom and followed.

It wasn’t much, she thought, a grudging apology on the heels of a compliment. But it was something. She smiled to herself, and nudged Peachblossom into a trot.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm tenderjock on tumblr as well; if you want to talk about kel or anything else, really, feel free to hmu!!


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